Bed bugs almost never feed on us when we are awake. They wait, sometimes for weeks or months until we are asleep in our bed then quickly crawl out, feed and crawl back to hide. The feeding process takes only about 10 to 15 minutes. Bed bugs will enter your house or apartment most often by hitchhiking on your clothing. At the end of the day you take your clothes and put them in a hamper or hang them over a chair in your bedroom. The bed bug must then leave your clothes, crawl across the floor and up the leg of your bed in order to bite you. This is perhaps the best place to break the cycle. The most important method to slow the spread of bed bugs is by the use of leg traps. These are small, inexpensive, devices that will give early warning if a room becomes infested and might even prevent a new infestation.

Bed bug proof mattress covers are another tool commonly used to help with control of bed bugs. The mattress is zipped inside an encasement that bed bugs can neither escape from nor bite through. They are locked in and will eventually starve to death. If you have bed bugs, the covers save you from throwing away your mattress since it cannot be sprayed with pesticides for health reasons. The problem with bed bug covers is that they are relatively expensive (queen approx. $150.00 for mattress and box spring) and also they do not prevent you from getting bed bugs. The other question is when do you put them on? If you put them on before the bed bugs are completely eradicated then bed bugs will infest the outside of the cover. Also be sure to check that the covers you are buying are bed bug certified and not just mattress covers. One advantage of heat treatment is that covers become irrelevant. Heat will penetrate the mattress and box spring completely and kill all stages of bed bugs.